ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the interface between the vulnerability context and rural livelihoods in the semi-arid Negande community in Omay communal land, NyamiNyami district. Adverse agro-ecological conditions militate against agriculture, which is the immediate safety net for the Negande community. In the environmentally sensitive age that characterises today's world, one is bound to question the sustainability of cultivating on the riverbed, both in terms of the long-term sustenance of people's livelihoods and in terms of conserving the physical environment. Mabbonzyi is augmented by cotton contract farming and cultivation of drought resistant sorghum. Cultivation of sorghum and contract farming occur during the conventional rainy season. The chapter considers some of the vulnerability factors, which impinge in various ways on the mabbonzyi practice, starting with environmental management institutions. Mabbonzyi farming in Negande serves the purpose of livelihoods coping in the light of the adverse effects of droughts, but it exists in an external policy context that subjects it to institutional constraints.
